September 27, 2008 archive

Sep 27 2008

Weekend News Digest

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

52 stories.  Yes no Business or Science yet.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Tainted milk crisis hits more global companies

By ELAINE KURTENBACH, AP Business Writer

Sat Sep 27, 7:35 AM ET

SHANGHAI, China – Snackers, beware: Your favorite chocolate or creamy treats might contain milk contaminated with melamine.

The list of companies facing potential recalls grew Friday as reports of foods tainted with the industrial chemical melamine, which has been blamed in the deaths of four Chinese infants, spread to a widening range of products.

Food companies around the globe are rushing to assess their products and in some cases setting new strategies to prevent problems.

2 Chinese leader vows better food safety, ethics

By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer

2 hours, 31 minutes ago

BEIJING – Premier Wen Jiabao promised Saturday to improve Chinese food safety, seeking to tamp down public anxiety in the widening scandal over tainted milk that has sickened more than 50,000 children.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in the port of Tianjin, Wen did not announce new initiatives but he said the government would work to instill business ethics in light of the milk contamination and a string of earlier product safety disasters.

“We plan not only to revitalize the food industry and the milk powder industry, we will try to ensure that all China-made products are safe for consumers and consumers can buy with assurance,” he said.

Sep 27 2008

Aquarium of the Pacific: the others

In the concluding piece of the Aquarium of the Pacific photographs, I am left with those creatures who did not fit in the first two pieces, colors and medusae, ponies and dragons.

But I’m cool with that.  I have experience with being in the category of Other on a lot of points.

The dude to the left is a sea bass.  I searched and searched for video from Shadow of the Thin Man, hoping to find the hilarious sea bass scene.  Alas, my search was in vain.

But come on in if you wish to see some crustaceans and octopodes, eels  anemones, coral and other stationary critters, sharks, rays, and a couple of sea lions…and a surprise or two.  

Sep 27 2008

I got your Financial Crisis right here

h/t to occams hatchet

Photobucket

$700 Billion is chicken feed….ok, make that fish feed. How much is THIS going to cost?


WASHINGTON — The world pumped up emissions of the chief human-produced global warming gas last year, setting a course that could push beyond leading scientists’ projected worst-case scenario, international researchers said Thursday.

The new numbers, which some scientists called “scary,” were a surprise because experts thought an economic downturn would slow energy use. Instead, carbon dioxide output rose 3% from 2006 to 2007.

That amount exceeds the most dire outlook for emissions from burning coal and oil and related activities as projected by a Nobel Prize-winning group of international scientists in 2007.

When do we start planning for the economic crisis  disaster that accelerated Warming IS bringing us?

What are the economic implications of, in the worst case scenario, the loss of housing stock on the low lying coasts, increased storm strength and frequency, crop failure, drought, major port cities underwater?

Best case scenario? World economic upheaval as we change to a non-oil based world society fast enough to prevent the worst case scenarios, if indeed they are preventable at this point.

Has anyone else noticed that just about EVERY new report on Climate Crisis contains the words “worse than the most alarming predictions of past studies?” Or some variation thereof. We can see the chaotic, clueless, guesswork reaction to the comparatively tiny ‘crisis’ the economy is now facing. This is the direct result of people seeing the upcoming crisis, jumping up and down yelling about the upcoming crisis, , publishing stern warnings that the upcoming crisis was coming…..and yet no one actually DOING anything to stop the crisis.

Sep 27 2008

I Am

I am the interim,

The woman in between

The love you lost and the love that earns your heart.

The interim is me.

We will sing and dance through all our days

With feet bare and loose hair.

I will take off my clothes when you’re in the mood.

Dancing and singing and loving will compose us.

I will cook for you, three meals a day,

And clean your house and wash your clothes.

I will not do these things well,

But you can count on something to eat, something to wear.

I will comb your hair, and I will braid it

Like a warrior or a lover to fit your mood.

You will never feel the tangles when I comb them.

We will shower, and I will wash your hair for you.

We will drive at night, and smoke,

And sometimes we will stop beside the water

Or visit the mountains and dream of living there.

And when we dream, we will laugh without control.

Then eventually, something will happen to (you and me),

A separation that only occurs

Because what can’t exist can’t last for long.

Always, I must go my own way,

Out of the interim, into the woman between.

Sep 27 2008

rest in peace Paul

Paul Newman

from yahoo news

WESTPORT, Conn. – Paul Newman, the Academy-Award winning superstar who personified cool as the anti-hero of such films as “Hud,” “Cool Hand Luke” and “The Color of Money” – and as an activist, race car driver and popcorn impresario – has died. He was 83.

Newman died Friday after a long battle with cancer at his farmhouse near Westport, publicist Jeff Sanderson said. He was surrounded by his family and close friends.

Sep 27 2008

Pony Party

Here are a few more pictures from the fair I attended. I am leaving for Las Vegas tomorrow and since I will be going solo (sniff) I suppose I should have time to get some more cool pictures.

DSC_0063

DSC_0066

DSC_0059

DSC_0106

DSC_0102

DSC_0101

Yes. There is a hat theme here.

Thanks for looking. Hang out chit chat and then go read some of the excellent diaries on our recent and rec’d list. And feel free to show us some recent pictures you may have taken.

Sep 27 2008

Memories, Coming In Waves

I remember the first time I saw you

  Playing chess with Jeff on Clayton Street,

  The 409 House, a ministry for street people.

  David introduced Jeff to Pat and me after the game,

  But my eyes were on you.

I remember the first time we spoke.

  A boy gave me charge of a big, black dog

     his mother wouldn’t let him keep.

  You said, “That’s a big dog.”

  I said, “I’m trying to find a home for him.”

I remember the night you lost your virginity.

  Sweet love.

I remember sleeping beside you in Panhandle Park.

  It was a sunny day in early fall.

I remember sitting on the floor with Pat and Jeff and David

  In a hotel apartment on Market Street,

  And you sat, cross-legged, shoulders bent slightly,

     with your elbows on your knees,

  And your head tilted toward us as you told stories–

  Tales of Heinlein and of your travels.

Now your stories bring back these memories.

Every thought immerses me.

I’m about to drown in memory.

Sep 27 2008

Docudharma Times Saturday September 27



I’ll Be On A Stage With Someone Else

But Pretend Like They Are Not There

That’s Not Presidential That’s Childish




Suturday’s Headlines:

Taking control, taking stock at WaMu

Pakistani tribes fight back against Taliban

Terror plots and conspiracy theories: the hunt for Rashid Rauf

Judge opens inquiry into Spain’s ‘red terror’ victims

Europe’s ‘last dictator’ set to reap rewards for courting the West

 Syrian ‘car bomb’ blast kills 17

Draft UN resolution puts renewed pressure on Iran’s nuclear ambition

Somali pirates capture Ukrainian cargo ship loaded with military hardware

Mbeki’s exit earns African praise and barbs

An American is missing in Mexico, but his other life emerges

Candidates Clash on Economy and Iraq  

 

 By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JEFF ZELENY

Published: September 27, 2008    

From the economy to foreign affairs to the way they carried themselves on stage, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama offered a dramatic contrast to the nation in their first presidential debate on Friday night, mixing disdain and often caustic remarks as they set out sharply different views of how they would manage the country and confront America’s adversaries abroad.

The two men met for 90 minutes against the backdrop of the nation’s worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and intensive negotiations in Congress over a $700 billion bailout plan for Wall Street.

China milk scandal hits home

Chinese had shrugged off previous problems as Western hysteria, but tainted milk has many wondering what else poses a risk. Even professed patriots seek out products not made in China.

By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

10:43 PM PDT, September 26, 2008  

BEIJING — Even after regulators assured the public that all contaminated baby formula was off the shelves, B.X. Wei wasn’t going to feed his 2-month-old son anything that came out of a can. Especially not one made in China.

But his wife didn’t have enough breast milk for the baby.  

Then the 30-year-old businessman from Jiangsu province remembered that during his childhood, women would nurse each other’s babies if one ran out of milk. So he decided to try a new twist on the old tradition: On Monday, he put an ad on the Internet soliciting a wet nurse.

“I don’t know if any milk powder is safe,” Wei said.

China’s latest food scandal has created a surge of interest in wet nurses. Wei has been interviewing candidates who are asking for as much as $1,500 a month — about 10 times the average price of a nanny

 

USA

Economists say House GOP plan would be ineffective, costly

 

By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers  

WASHINGTON – House Republicans are rallying behind an alternative to the Bush administration’s taxpayer rescue of Wall Street. That plan that may be good politics, but experts say it is bad economics.

The lawmakers, led by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, are calling for a temporary elimination of the capital gains tax, a two-year tax holiday that allows U.S. companies to repatriate earnings from abroad, and an insurance program that would be a private-sector alternative to the $700 billion taxpayer rescue proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

Sep 27 2008

The bipartisan deregulators

Original article, by Lance Selfa and subtitled Both parties have honored Corporate America’s wish for eliminating government regulation, via Socialistworker.org:

LIKE EVERYTHING else in Washington–from the Iraq war to the USA PATRIOT Act–the financial crisis that has already brought down a host of blue-chip Wall Street firms is a bipartisan disaster.

Sep 27 2008

Bernie Sanders’ Sane Solution: Between Bailout and Collapse

Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed what looks to me like the most sane and reasonable solution to our financial mess.  

Instead of being between a rock and a hard place, between a fraudulent bailout of the criminal banksters and a total collapse, Great Depression 2, destruction of the financial systems of the U.S. and the world, we have the middle ground sanity of Bernie Sanders.  His proposal for, if not solving, at least helping to heal our dire financial straits is the best I’ve seen.

Wall Street Bailout – 09/26/2008

There is little public support for President Bush’s $700 billion bailout. Just 30 percent support Bush’s package, according to an Associated Press poll released Friday. More than 4,000 of you have taken our survey, and those results are even more remarkable. Are you confident that taxpayers would be treated fairly if Congress and the Bush administration agree on a bailout? You aren’t. Do you think a bailout would help the economy? No. Do you favor a surtax on individuals who make more than $500,000 a year and couples earning more than $1 million to pay for a Wall Street bailout? More than 91 percent agree with the proposal by Senator Bernie Sanders. What’s more, as of late Friday, more than 40,000 (as of late Friday)of you co-signed Bernie’s letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson suggesting a tax on the very wealthy.

Follow below the fold to learn more and see if you want to sign on and support Sanders’ proposal.

Sep 27 2008

Overnight Caption Contest

Sep 27 2008

McCain’s bracelet jab let Obama land the knockout punch

The best moment in Friday’s presidential debate, for me, was when John McCain brought up the bracelet he has been wearing during the campaign. McCain gave Barack Obama an opening and Obama came back with a knockout punch.

It was great that Obama had bracelet too, but what made the counter punch so devastating was what Barack did with the opening McCain’s bracelet story provided.

But first, here is some background. McCain has been using the bracelet anecdote on the campaign trail repeatedly. Back in March, ABC News wrote about McCain and the bracelet.

Toward the end of almost every speech he gives or informal remarks he delivers at a town hall-style meeting, Sen. John McCain tells the same story.

If you watch him carefully, you can even tell when it’s coming.

The Arizona senator will shoot his right arm forward in his suit sleeve, revealing a dark metallic band low on his wrist. It’s probably an unconscious gesture. He doesn’t hold up the bracelet. He doesn’t look at it. But very soon he will tell the story. He has told it hundreds of times.

Load more